Anil Ambani-led Reliance Defence Ltd, and Rafael Advanced Defence Systems Ltd of Israel have decided to set up a joint venture (JV) company in India.

JV will deal in the highly specialized areas of air-to-air missiles, air defence systems and large aerostats.

JV will have 51 per cent holding from Reliance Defence and 49 per cent by Rafael.

The new venture will be located at Dhirubhai Ambani Land Systems Park at Indore in Madhya Pradesh.

FM Arun Jaitley launches ‘Make in India’ conference in Sydney

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley launched ‘Make in India’ conference in Sydney asking Australian businesses to be the part of India’s growth story.

The conference was launched in the presence of

Australia’s Special Envoy for trade- Andrew Robb,

Indian High Commissioner- Navdeep Suri,

CII Director-General- Chandrajit Banerjee,

CII President- Sumit Mazumder and

NEW Parliament Secretary for Major Events and Tourism- Jonathan O’Dea

India has been given a second chance to transform itself into manufacturing hub with ‘Make in India’ campaign launch.

Htin Kyaw sworn in as Myanmar’s President

Htin Kyaw was sworn in as Myanmar’s first civilian president, ushering in the first democratically elected government into office after decades of military rule.

He is a confidante of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and belonged to the National League for Democracy Party.

The First Vice President is Myint Swe and Second Vice President is Henry Van Tio

The outgoing President Thein Sein formally handed over the presidency to Htin Kyaw.

Inoperative provident fund accounts to earn interest

The govt. has scrapped a decision taken by the previous UPA govt. to suspend interest credits on inoperative Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) accounts, in the absence of any fresh contributions in the accounts for three years.

At present, 9.23 crore out of total 15 crore EPF accounts are inoperative with around Rs.44,000 crore deposits in them.

Interest income was not credited to such accounts since April 1, 2011 but will now be crediting interest from April 1, 2016.

The govt. has not yet taken a decision on crediting interest on these inoperative accounts between April 2011 and April 2016.

Pele sues Samsung for unauthorised use of his image

Retired Brazilian soccer great Pele has filed suit in a US federal court in Chicago against South Korean electronics giant Samsung.

He alleged that Samsung used an image of someone who resembles him in an advertisement.

He filed the suit to obtain fair compensation for the unauthorised use of his identity and to prevent future unauthorised uses

He was negotiating with Samsung in 2013 but at the last minute they pulled out of the negotiations and never obtained the right to use Pele’s identity in any manner or in any format.

Legendary playback singer P. Susheela enters Guinness World Records

Legendary singer P. Susheela has become the Guinness World Records title holder for the highest number of solo, duet and chorus backed songs in over six Indian languages.

She has sung 17,695 solo, duet and chorus backed songs across multiple languages as on January 28, 2016.

She has also won Asia book of records for recoding the most number of songs in Indian languages.

She made her singing debut in 1952 Tamil film “Petra Thai”.

She has also worked in several classics such as “Missamma”, “Savaale Samaali”, “Siri Siri Muvva” and “Meghasandesham”

She has five National Awards to her credit and Padma Bhushan honour (2008).

Agra’s Pallavi in Limca Book as First Solo Woman to Cross Mana Pass

Pallavi Fauzdar, 35, from Agra has become the first woman solo motorcyclist to ride across Mana pass in Uttarakhand, arguably the world’s highest motorable mountain pass.

Mana is located at a staggering altitude of 5,638 m (18,497 ft) above sea level, on the border between India and Tibet.

Mana Pass is considered as one of the most difficult biking trails.

Pallavi received an acknowledgement and a certificate from Limca.

Sergey Karjakin Wins Candidates’ Tournament, Qualifies For World Title Match

Sergey Karjakin defeated Fabiano Caruana in the final round of the 2016 Candidates’ Tournament, making him the new challenger for the world championship

FIDE World Chess Candidates Tournament was being held in Moscow

Karjakin will face World Champion Magnus Carlsen in November in New York.

Sergey Karjakin, is a Ukrainian-born Russian chess grandmaster and the youngest player ever to gain the GM title (at 12 years and 7 months).

ICICI Lombard launches healthcare rating portal

CICI Lombard has launched a web portal to enable consumers to make informed choices while choosing their healthcare provider.

The web portal will be providing hospital and consumer feedback based rating for healthcare providers.

The portal also has over 750 listings of average cost of around 30 common medical hospitalisation procedures in ten major cities.

CICI Lombard has partnered with Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) to identify quality indicators to compare healthcare providers in the Indian context.

TISS and ICICI Lombard arrived at a set of 20 indicators that were relevant in an Indian context, comprehensive and easy to capture across hospitals.